“Tactical Takeaways -

1. Basing Cage Corner = Cage that is About to Fail

A tale as old as time for me. Start with a based cage corner, and you're pretty likely to be losing the ball. Happened here, but I will say that the defense forced it quite well. The issue was that all my black orcs were tied up a certain point, and I wasn't able to find the ideal cage site. Reviewing the replay, there's a pretty simple one, but I didn't see it.

2. MV7 Carrier

I also never considered the M7 carrier. Everything I was thinking about was based off of M6. I even marked the field based on M6. Had I recognized that he was M7 I wouldn't have been in as much of a hurry to try and get things moving T6.

3. MB + Claw

First time playing a team with a lot of Claw MB. The way update works is that they cannot be used together. You can Claw at 8+, but MB doesn't make it 7+. This means that the MB only comes into effect on the injury itself. This is still quite powerful, but not nearly as good as it was in the old days.

Also a note, seemed like we skated by a very likely murdering of our team thanks to dice.

4. Mid TV Games

Just a personal reflection really on my thoughts on mid-TV and higher games. What is difficult to me is that this point and beyond is where we start to see more and more of the freaks: +Ag, +Mv, Block, Dodge type players. These players feel like something the original game didn't intend. There are Star Players with similar builds that in theory should only exist in huge TV discrepancy games. This is an even match up, but features a player that is statistically speaking nearly unstoppable - and he's not even that good compared to the Two Head Gutters, Super Skinks, Werewolves, and such. There's an argument that my more vanilla team with skills spread out - no true freaks - is better because we're more well-rounded, but I've consistently seen from playing higher level coaches that the way to go is the freak with rookies essentially everywhere else. I just enjoy more the lower TV games 1300 or so and 15 games or less, where most skill stacks haven't have gone into effect yet. Perhaps, this is just asking to play against Dwarves, Norse and Amazons all day, which obviously isn't that enjoyable, but just about any team at lower TV is a lot more fun to me. I like being able to say that if I get a 2D hit on a ball carrier, that ball carrier is most likely going down. If I screen off well, the other team is most likely not going to be able to dodge through it. At higher TV it's a different game. Screens, cages, sacking, start to take on a different feel. You have to build a freak to combat the freak. I get that this makes for "boring" teams, but they feel more coaching decision based as opposed to player development based. When you line up against a Mv+, Two Heads, Blodge Gutter, you know he's going to score. It is nearly inevitable, and that feels self-defeating. This wasn't a bad game, but it was a reminder for me of why I prefer lower TV. ”